XXX FLORA OF OXFORDSHIRE. 
the waters it has collected from Broughton Poggs, Alvescott, 
Bampton, and Aston. Then by Standlake Common (now a topo- 
graphical expression), it receives the Windrush, a stream of 
considerable beauty, over 30 miles long, which rises on the 
Cotteswolds at about goo feet summit elevation, enters Oxford- 
shire near Burford, with its fine church of Tainton stone, and 
drains that tract of the country, once grassy down, fragrant 
with thyme, and adorned with Pulsatilla, Herminiunr, Cineraria, 
and Ophrys aranifera, but now denuded of these, and converted 
into arable ground, bare and bleak, and only showing at intervals 
on its road borders on the site of some old quarry, too barren 
to be utilised, traces of its former floral glories. Nor, as the 
stream hurries (or as Drayton writes, ‘scowres’ to join the 
Thames) by Minster Lovell to Witney does the aspect of the 
country favourably compare with that which it exhibited to the 
eighteenth century botanist, when Wychwood covered with its 
sylvan beauty and its rich profusion of flowers the fields, 
which even Murray now describes as desert-like in barrenness. 
Still, some of its old hedgerows show Anemones and Stachys 
germanica; but it is through country comparatively of small 
botanical interest, that the Windrush hastens by Witney 
(despoiled to a great extent of its glory), Ducklington, 
and Cokethorpe’s alluvial meadows into the Thames, which 
bends northwards by Stanton Harcourt and Bablock Hithe, 
to Eynsham, where some small brooks draining South Leigh 
(home of Sibthorp) come in; it then leaves on the south the 
Beacon Hill. Near Cassington the Evenlode brings in its turbid 
waters, at its commencement gathered in a wide tract of Lias, at 
a low summit level, between Stow and Icomb, a feature of consider- 
able interest to the physiographist. It runs about 30 miles from 
its source, to its juncture with the Thames, in winding sweeps, 
whose general direction is almost parallel with that of the Wind- 
rush; entering the county near Kingham, it flows by Bruern’s 
antique abbey, by Shipton, the lingering home of Botrychium, 
and by Ascott to Charlbury, where the Wychwood streams add 
to its volume, draining as they do the pools in Cornbury quarries 
with their hawthorn-covered sides, From Charlbury to Handboro 
the river flows in curves of great beauty, bordered by cliffs 
whose hanging woods are here and there adorned with the 
